The government have fucked up the re-opening of schools

[noblegiraffe]

They have, haven't they?

Back in June their five tests for reopening schools were:

First we must protect the NHS’s ability to cope, and be sure that it can continue to provide critical care and specialist treatment right across the whole of the United Kingdom.

Second, we need to see daily death rates from coronavirus coming down.

Third, we need to have reliable data that shows the rate of infection is decreasing to manageable levels.

Four, we need to be confident that testing capacity and PPE is being managed, with supply able to meet, not just today’s demand, but future demand.

And fifth, and perhaps most crucially, we need to be confident that any changes we do make will not risk a second peak of infections.

I'm pretty sure I know the reason for not reminding people of those five tests this time round, but particularly test 4 - capacity within the testing system.

I was listening to the radio today about how the lack of testing is damaging the NHS's capacity to reopen services as nurses with symptoms cannot get tests and therefore cannot return to work. The same goes for schools - if teachers cannot get tests, either for themselves or for family members with symptoms, then they cannot go to work. This has been the case even with priority referrals.

There also seems to be utter chaos around who gets sent home when there is a positive test. Some schools are sending home a year group, others close contacts. Teachers often have no idea if they'll be sent home if one of their pupils tests positive.

But surely the government are tracking cases in schools carefully? No, it turns out they're not even storing that data. schoolsweek.co.uk/its-official-dfe-doesnt-know-how-many-schools-have-covid-cases

And a survey suggests that covid protection measures in some schools are poor. www.tes.com/news/third-teachers-lack-soap-and-water-school

So with an abysmal test and trace system, less than adequate measures to prevent the spread, and a department that isn't on top of its brief we can expect more disruption to come.

Even if your own kids' school is fine so far, parents really shouldn't be happy with this state of affairs, particularly the lack of testing capacity that will mean children will be out of school or missing a teacher unnecessarily.

YABU: The government have done a sterling job
YANBU: The government have not done a sterling job

The fatality rate is still well below 1%. It has been for several weeks- now that we’re actually testing on the community rather than just testing the serious cases that end up in hospital. People’s anxiety is through the roof though because of lockdown and constant reporting of every.single.case so it’s going to be a while before things settle down and people accept that we are not dealing with as deadly a disease as we originally thought and we can actually get on with our lives with a few extra precautions.

The damage to people’s mental health - including young people who have returned to school or started new schools under the most horrible, restricted circumstances - is far more of a long term risk. Along with the damage that has been done to the economy - the loss of jobs/people’s businesses etc.

@Clavinova

KenDodd Too busy - going out for the day.

That's nice Another day in for us, quarantining because we can't get a test for ds. More school missed, more wages lost...yay for the Tories eh.

I’m a teacher, my DP is a teacher, my mum was a teacher, my sister is a teacher, DPs sister is a teacher. We all predicted this utterly ridiculous situation. There’s none of us geniuses or experts. How the fuck, in the entire government did they not have one person with a working knowledge of education that couldn’t foresee the current situation? Or did they just ignore that knowledge like they ignored the unions? They either didn’t know or didn’t care. I’m pretty sure which one I feel is the case.

@bumbleymummy more needs to be known about long term impact some people are having from being ill with COVID, it’s not just about deaths

it's a bloody mess - just like i thought it would be!

My son has to get a bus to school - with 3 other schools of mixed year groups. Then strict bubbles at school. Same bus home. So what the f#ck is the point! Surely they should at least lay on 1 bus per school.

My daughters school has year group bubbles but we have to line up down the street to get in and parents and kids arent distancing or wearing masks - hell they cant even manage to follow the boody one way signs so what hope is there. Once in there are a good 2000 people stuffed in waiting to get the kids sanitised before they go in to the bubbles.

Now the schools are doing all they can and actually doing an excellent job. The parents arent bloody doing what they have been asked though and the government havent considered (or they have and dont care) the implications of getting there and how much contact that involves.

As for testing - i know people that still havent had there results over 2 weeks after testing. It's also been leaked that the government are claiming they are doing so many tests, when actually that is what they have the capacity to carry out, but they arent doing it. Also 250,000 tests are being dumped due to delays them unusable and not notifying the patient to retest. That's if you can actually get one.

Track and trace is a mockery too - no where is logging who is where so it doesnt work. Say some one at 1 of the 3 schools on my son's bus gets covid... that's the bus load that needs to isolate and anyone on that bus could take it into school with them - infecting 3 schools. But seeing as nobody knows who was on the bus they cant trace it. Then there are the families that goes home to and their work places and other schools.... Just takes one person getting it to turn this in to a full blown disaster.

Honestly they shouldnt have opened schools without better structures in place. But what Bojo wants is herd immunity and to save the economy. He doesnt give a damn who gets it, who dies and as for the NHS - he wants that gone anyway so doesnt care about that either. Mark my words - the government arent doing any of this for our benefit - quite the opposite.

Yes, the school bus is another flipping bubble. One whole year group at DC school is home for 2 weeks due to one positive case (at least 200 pupils), plus all the pupils on the bus. That is most annoying in a way since there is an upstairs and downstairs, some pupils only get on towards the end and aren't even on the bus for 15 minutes. They all wear masks. So it doesn't even meet the criteria for 15 minutes in close proximity, so the majority of the bus should still be in school instead of sat under house arrest at home after 1 week in school, without any symptoms and no testing to demonstrate whether or not they have any virus.

[quote ineedaholidaynow]@bumbleymummy more needs to be known about long term impact some people are having from being ill with COVID, it’s not just about deaths[/quote]
exactly - i caught it beginning of March. This week i have suffered yet another flare. It took 2 months to recover from the initial infection and im still suffering from it all these months on. The chronic fatigue, the difficulty breathing, the intense headaches - sometimes a flare can last a day, sometimes a week or 2. My lungs have never been the same since and i'm dreading the winter and cold season. The fear that i was suffocating has never left me and i panic with every flare. Yet there is pretty much nothing being done for people with this (and i am one of 1000s still suffering). Even asymptomatic people can have post infection health issues.

The people who have been seriously ill in hospital are even worse - the nurses treating them said that it's not if but when they will need lung transplants and their hearts have also been severely damaged too. But people would rather have their social lives and pretend this is all a sniffle.

@mrpostit

Schools are open and your kids are being educated. The problem is Covid 19, not the government. You might think the coping strategies are not perfect (they're not) but what would you do? Moaning is a national pastime, and if it's moaning about Conservatives, even better. And btw, it's "the government has f*d up" (singular). "Members of the government have f*d up" (plural).

Even your grammar correction is wrong. Well done.

Blimey might aswell rename this thread LabourNet because if anyone thinks things would be any different if any other party was in power you are all dreaming. As a country we can only physically work with what we’ve got, we are basically testing MORE than any other European country yes that’s why results are taking longer etc but what did you expect to do. Without actual magic what do you really expect to happen during an unprecedented global pandemic. Seriously?

Things would be different even with a different Tory party in power.

One that actually sacked Dom Cummings (or never hired him), one that didn’t see the pandemic as an opportunity to line pockets, one that could give it proper attention because they weren’t also busy breaking international law etc etc.

@Clavinova

Mumratheevergiving

Has your school used up its initial stock of 10 test kits?

@Clavinova I can now confirm that yes indeed one of the schools my children attend has run out of tests as they have notified parents to tell them. This gives me no pleasure to report as it means potentially my child's education being further disrupted (if staff cannot get tested) and that other children locally are experiencing disruption to their education.

For the country's testing system to unravel at this crunch point is a disaster and IT IS the Government's responsibility.

Gavin Williamson addressing parliament on the Autumn return:
"We are also ensuring that testing is readily available, so that parents, teachers and students can return with confidence. All staff, pupils and their families will continue to have access to testing if they develop covid-19 symptoms." [anger]

@Scottsy100

Blimey might aswell rename this thread LabourNet because if anyone thinks things would be any different if any other party was in power you are all dreaming. As a country we can only physically work with what we’ve got, we are basically testing MORE than any other European country yes that’s why results are taking longer etc but what did you expect to do. Without actual magic what do you really expect to happen during an unprecedented global pandemic. Seriously?

Or perhaps it's just that the other posters on this thread understand that the standard the administration have to meet isn't the way in which you desperately hope have decided in your head that other alternative governments might fail. It's what a competent government would do.

Labour are irrelevant. They've not been in power for a decade (and when they were, they did a better job at pandemic planning than this fucking shower, as did previous Conservative administrations in fact). Barring some significant unforeseen event, they won't be back in until 2024 or maybe 2023 if a 4 year election at the very earliest. It's years away. And the Tories have a thumping great majority. This is their mess.

Considering BoJo threw Pandemic planning to the dogs last year in favour of getting Brexit done it is veryeasy to place this mess at the feet of his Government. Where is the World Class testing system. They've stuffed up good and proper and still haven't git Brexit done.
A Government of Liars, bluffers, baffoons and reckless self-servers. Any health advisor to any previous administration would say the same as any of these comments on here.

Yep. They and only they decided to prioritise Brexit over pandemic planning.

If this was LabourNet we’d all be arguing about Corbyn and Starmer, not talking about test kits.

Maybe you should have all been MP’s then 🤷‍♀️

Gosh, you really don't like people pointing out what a shit job Boris and Co are doing, do you?

My ego isn't big enoughto be an MP. But those who have put themselves forward for the top jobs are failing the people they are getting paid to serve. There is no getting away from that.

Boris needs to go. But they will throw Dido to the wolves for this.

They'll throw someone. There's going to have to be a scapegoat.

Well she wouldn't exactly be a scapegoat, this is the second massive multimillion pound pandemic project she has messed up and failed at.

Well no, but it's not just her. But you can bet nobody will face any consequences for giving her the gig in the first place, for example.

Don’t forget Gav should also have been thrown to the wolves.

But he’s still there

OGEOF and TEFKAP - I agree!

Gav didn't get binned because he did that photoshoot with his whip when the A-level fiasco was happening, suggesting he has dirt on Boris.